Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Time for my annual end-of-the-year writing recap! I started doing these in 2014, at the end of my first full year in Baylor's history PhD program. It's crazy to think that my time at Baylor is almost over. I'll be defending my dissertation this spring, and by the end of next year I'll be somewhere that is not Waco, Texas.

As for where I'll be, I have no idea right now. I'll either land a history professor job or a postdoc somewhere, or else I'll embark on the mysterious "alt-ac" career path. Either way, I'd do the past 4.5 years all over again. Working towards a PhD has been incredibly difficult, to be sure, but it has also been incredibly rewarding. Shoutout to the excellent Baylor history department—professors, administrators, graduate student colleagues—for making the lonely road to the PhD a little less lonely for me and my family.

But enough with the reflections. There will be time enough for that when I, you know, actually finish and defend my dissertation. On to the writing recap!

THE ALBATROSS AROUND MY NECK

That would be my dissertation. Right now it's titled "God, Country, and Big-Time Sports: The Creation of 'Sportianity' and the Transformation of American Protestantism, 1920-1980." I started writing the thing in April and have since completed five chapters totaling 293 pages. I've got one more chapter to finish up before I send it off to my dissertation committee (and then binge watch Netflix for a week).